Why Ice Cube turned to ex-Raiders exec Amy Trask to help guide his basketball league

Share this:

CHICAGO, IL – JUNE 29: League Co-Founder and entertainer, Ice Cube, congratulates Nate Robinson #11 of Tri State after they defeated the Ball Hogs during week two of the BIG3 three on three basketball league at United Center on June 29, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/BIG3/Getty Images)

OAKLAND — Ice Cube and Amy Trask, the rapper and the lawyer, would make for a good sitcom if they weren’t so busy spearheading their rising 3-on-3 basketball league.

The two are longtime friends, going back at least 20 years and bonded by their connection to the Raiders. Now they are business partners whose contrasting skill sets are combining to get Big3 basketball off the ground.

“It’s been great just seeing how tough she is,” Cube told the Bay Area News Group on Thursday night.

The league makes its Oakland debut with a four-game set at Oracle Arena on Friday night after averaging about 15,000 fans at its first two stops.

This is what Cube, and co-CEO Jeff Kwatinetz, thought about when they started drawing up their blueprint for the league that launched in 2017: the courts and the uniforms and the DJ and the dancers.

And this is what Trask thought about: the taxes and the medical issues and lots of other boring bits of red tape.

“That’s her playground,” Cube said. “She’s caught up in, ‘Do all of our players have physicals? In the case of injuries, will insurance take care of it?’ And things like that. So it’s been great to have her. She’s much-needed. We wouldn’t be this far along without her.”

Big3 basketball puts former NBA stars in a half-court format. The winning team is the first squad to score 50 (and win by at least two). Among the top players this season are former Warriors stars Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson.

Trask is Big3 basketball’s chairman of the board and, as Cube knows, she’s always been good at the little details. Years ago, Trask was the one who helped him score sweet parking spots to games when the rapper was among the team’s most famous fans.

“She’s always kind of been my link to the organization,” Cube said. “Amy has just always taken care of us. She’s always treated me like family. It’s just been great.”

Cube grew up in LA and, as an impressionable 11-year-old, became a Raiders fan while watching the 1980 team shock the NFL with a victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV.

From his days with the group N.W.A, he spread the Raiders gospel by wearing the team’s gear in various movies. Years later, he would produce an ESPN documentary on the Raiders called “Straight Outta L.A.”

Along the way, Cube befriended Trask, who started as an intern in the Raiders legal department in 1983 before becoming the team’s longtime CEO.

Now, as basketball executives, Cube and Trask had some fun with their Raiders ties in June. That’s when the rapper created a stir by (allegedly) saying that he planned to wear a T-shirt that said, “It Was a Fumble” when the Big3 league visited Boston this season. That’s a reference to the famous “Tuck Rule” game in the 2001 AFC playoffs.

As Cube’s line got people in New England riled up, Trask stepped in to take the heat.

“OK — before anyone gets all mad at Ice Cube, I was the one who said that on a conference call,” Trask tweeted. “I did so in good spirit as a good sport — come on people, it’s fun (and it was a fumble).”

On Friday, of course, the focus will stick to basketball. On that count, Cube wants fans to keep an eye on two other familiar faces: Davis and Jackson, the two ex-Warriors, who are playing as if splashed by the fountain of youth.

“Man, both of them are front runners for league MVP right now,” Cube said. “Both of them are scoring, putting teams on their back. Stephen Jackson had 28 last game. Baron had 27. That’s big for games going to 50. So these guys are huge. They’re coming up big in this league.”